Have You Been Hit: Is Social Media Harmful? Where Is The Evidence And Mystery

At present, there are 3 billion people in the world using online social media, accounting for about 40% of the global population. According to some research reports, we spend an average of two hours a day on these platforms to share, like, tweet, and update posts. This means that 500000 tweets and Snapchat photos are shared every minute in the world.

Social media has played a very important role in our life, so will we sacrifice mental health, physical health and waste time for this? What does the relevant evidence show?

Social media is relatively new, so there are few conclusive conclusions. Existing research mainly relies on spontaneous reporting, so it is often prone to errors, and most of the research focuses on Facebook. However, research in this field is increasing rapidly, and evidence is beginning to point to this point. BBC Future summarizes some research achievements so far as follows:

　　 Release pressure

People use social media to complain about customer service dissatisfaction, politics and other things, but one disadvantage of this practice is that these complaints are like an endless stream of pressure. In 2015, researchers at the Pew Research Center in Washington tried to find out whether social media brought more pressure than it released.

A survey of 1800 people conducted by the Center found that women feel more pressure, and Twitter is an important source of pressure because it increases people's awareness of the pressure of others.

But Twitter is also a coping mechanism - the more women use Twitter, the less pressure they feel. Men are not. Researchers say men are more distant from social media. Overall, the researchers concluded that social media can reduce stress "slightly".

　　 True feelings

Austrian researchers found that subjects who used Facebook for 20 minutes were in a worse mood than those who browsed the Internet casually. The study believes that people have this feeling because they feel that using Facebook is a waste of time.

After evaluating the emotional content of more than 100 million Facebook users' 1 billion status updates between 2009 and 2012, researchers at the University of California believe that both positive and negative emotions will spread among people on social media platforms.

If the weather is bad, negative posts will increase by 1%. Researchers found that in a rainy city, a negative post will affect friends living in a city without rain, resulting in 1.3 negative posts. However, the good news is that happy posts have more influence. Each will bring 1.75 happy posts. However, it is not clear whether happy posts will improve the real mood.

　　 Causing anxiety

Researchers have studied the general anxiety caused by social media. The main characteristics of these anxieties are irritability, anxiety, sleep disorders and decreased attention. A study published in the journal Computers and Human Behavior found that people who use more than 7 social media platforms have three times more serious anxiety symptoms than those who use 0 to 2 platforms.

However, it is still unclear whether social media can cause anxiety and how it can cause anxiety. In 2016, researchers from Babes Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania, summarized the existing research on social anxiety and social relations. They said that the results were inconsistent and further research was needed.

　　　 Depressive symptoms

Although some studies have found that depression is related to the use of social media, new research suggests that social media may bring benefits.

Two studies conducted on more than 700 students found that depression symptoms such as depression, worthless and despairing emotions were related to the quality of online interaction. The researchers found that students with more negative interactions also had more serious depressive symptoms.

A similar study of 1700 people in 2016 found that social media users have triple risk of depression and anxiety. They think the reasons include online bullying, distorted understanding of other people's lives and the use of social media as a waste of time.

At the same time, scientists are also studying how to use social media to diagnose depression and help patients who receive treatment recover early. Microsoft researchers surveyed 476 people and analyzed their language, linguistic style, interaction and emotional characteristics related to depression in their Twitter personal information pages. Therefore, they designed a screening method that can accurately predict depression, and 70% of cases can be screened out before symptoms appear.

Researchers from Harvard University and Vermont Universities analyzed the Instagram photos of 166 people last year and designed a similar tool with the same success rate.

　　 Unable to sleep

People used to spend the night in darkness, but now they are surrounded by artificial light from morning till night. Research has found that this may inhibit the secretion of melatonin to promote sleep. The blue light from smart phones and laptop screens is said to be the culprit. In other words, when you lie in bed at night and use Facebook and Twitter, you can't sleep well.

Last year, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh surveyed 1700 people aged 18 to 30 about their social media use habits and sleep habits. They found a link between social media and sleep disorders and concluded that blue light played a role in this. Compared with the time spent using social media, the number of visits to these websites is a more important predictor of sleep disorders. The researchers said that people with sleep disorders would be addicted to "checking".

Researchers say this may be caused by physiological stimulation before sleep. The bright light of electronic equipment may cause the delay of circadian rhythm. But they can't tell whether social media causes sleep disorders or whether people with sleep disorders use social media more.

　　 More difficult than quitting smoking and drinking

Although some researchers believe that quitting Twitter is more difficult than quitting smoking and drinking, social media addiction has not been included in the latest manual for diagnosing mental disorders.

However, it is difficult for scientists to keep up with the pace of changes in social media. Therefore, various groups are trying to study obsessive-compulsive behaviors related to the use of social media - for example, Dutch scientists have invented their unique addiction identification criteria.

If social media is indeed addictive, it is a kind of Internet addiction - it can be classified as an obstacle. Daria Kuss and Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University, UK, analyzed 43 previous research results in 2011 and concluded that social media addiction is a mental health problem "likely" to require professional treatment. They found that overuse of social media was related to interpersonal problems, declining academic performance, and reduced participation in offline social activities. They also found that alcoholics, highly extroverts and people who use social media to make up for the lack of interpersonal relationships in real life are more likely to become addicted to social media.

　　 Affect self-esteem

The photos of underweight and revised models in women's magazines have long been guided to reveal the self-esteem problems of young women. However, social media, through filters, lighting effects and clever angles, is replacing women's magazines as the most worrying area for social movement groups and charities.

According to a survey of 1500 people carried out by the disabled charity Scope, more than half of the users feel lacking in social media websites, and half of people aged 18 to 34 say that social media makes them feel unattractive.

In 2016, a study by Penn State University showed that viewing other people's self portraits would hurt people's self-esteem, because users would compare happy people in photos with themselves. Studies by the University of Strathclyde, Ohio University and the University of Iowa also found that women compare themselves with other women's self portraits and have negative views.

But it's not just self portraits that may affect people's self-esteem. A study of 1000 Swedish Facebook users found that women who had used Facebook for a long time were more likely to feel unhappy and unsure. The researchers concluded: "When Facebook users compare their lives with those of other people who seem to have successful careers and happy families, they may feel less successful."

But a small study suggests that viewing your own personal pages rather than others' may enhance self-esteem. Researchers at Cornell University put 63 students into different groups. For example, some students sit next to the mirror opposite the computer screen, while others look at their Facebook personal page.

Compared with other self awareness raising activities, Facebook has a positive effect on self-esteem. The researcher explained that mirrors and photos allow us to compare ourselves with social standards, while looking at our Facebook personal page may enhance our self-esteem, because it is easier to control the way we present ourselves to the world on Facebook.

　 Negative effects

In a 2013 study, researchers sent text messages to 79 subjects five times a day for 14 days, asking their feelings and the extent of their use of Facebook since the last message. The longer people spend on the website, the worse their mood will be later, and their satisfaction with life will also decline later.

However, other studies have found that for some people, social media can help promote their happiness in life. Market researchers Jonah Berger and Eva Buechel found that people with unstable emotions are more likely to write about their emotions, which may help them gain support and extricate themselves from negative experiences.

According to a paper by Dutch researchers last year, overall, the role of social media in happiness is somewhat vague. However, they said that there is increasingly clear evidence that social media has an impact on a group of people: for those who are isolated from society, social media has more negative effects on their happiness.

　　 Influence of interpersonal relationship

If you ever chat with a friend and the other person takes out their mobile phone to swipe Instagram, you may have thought about the impact of social media on interpersonal relationships.

According to a small study, even if a mobile phone is placed beside it, it may affect people's interaction, especially when they are discussing something of great significance. Researchers who published articles in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships asked 34 pairs of strangers to chat for 10 minutes and tell about an interesting thing they had recently encountered. Each pair sat in a separate compartment, with a mobile phone on half of the tables.

People with mobile phones in their sight tend to have negative comments when recalling interactions later, have less meaning in conversation, and have a lower sense of intimacy with each other. The control subjects had notebooks on their desks.

Emotional relationships are not immune. In 2009, researchers from the University of Guelph in Canada surveyed 300 people aged 17-24 on whether they felt jealous on Facebook. Ask questions such as: "If your partner adds friends of the opposite sex who you don't know, how likely are you to feel jealous?"

Women spend much more time on Facebook than men, and they feel more jealous. The researcher concluded that "an environment like Facebook will cause this feeling and deepen people's concern about the quality of emotional relationships."

　 Blind envy

In a study of 600 people, about one third of the subjects said that social media made them feel negative emotions - mainly frustration - envy was the main reason. The fuse is to compare your life with others. The culprit is other people's travel photos. The sense of envy will spiral, because people will add more photos with the same content in order to cope with envy.

Researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee believe that envy is not necessarily a destructive emotion - it often urges us to study hard. They asked 380 students to see "enviable" photos and texts on Facebook and Twitter, including posts on expensive goods, travel and engagement. But researchers found that this envy is benign and more likely to make people study hard.

　 Solitude

A study published by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine last year surveyed 7000 people aged 19 to 32. It found that people who spend the most time on social media are twice as likely to feel social isolation, including lack of social belonging, interaction with others and full interpersonal relationships.

Researchers say that people who spend more time on social media may replace face-to-face communication and may feel more isolated.

"Contact with the highly idealized life displayed by others on social media may cause envy. It may also form some distorted views, such as other people's happier and more successful lives. This may increase known social isolation."

　 See your message here to discuss

We clearly know that in many aspects, we are not enough to draw firm conclusions. However, the evidence does point in one direction: social media has different effects on people, depending on the preconditions and personality.

Just like food, gambling and many other temptations in modern society, excessive use of social media may be detrimental to some people. But at the same time, we can't say that social media is a bad thing on the whole, because it has obviously brought a lot of benefits to our lives.